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Monday, February 28, 2011

Oh wow, the Apocalypse Challenge. This is something I'm pretty confident I'm going to fail spectacularly, but it does make for something awesome to do while I'm home sick with something horrible. Pretty confident it's a sinus infection after some fashion or other.

Because having a cough that just won't go away isn't at all unnerving given my recent obsession.

So, because I figure it'll be easier, I roll together a male Sim named Joe Smith.

Per the challenge rules, he's assigned the Politics career track, which is roughly the most useless career to try and unlock in the game. It's not very useful to be able to build outside of your little 8x8 box when you're starving to death. But I go with it, figuring eventually things would work out.

Three out of four of the other politicians? Vampires.

This can only end well.

So, Joe slowly begins to climb the political career ladder, polishing podiums and a myriad of other things, I'm sure. Along the way, he inevitably catches The Death, and rises as a vampire. All good, except for the part where he's got a day job, but sure.

There's exactly one living person left that Joe Smith even knows. So Joe fixates on her, in the hopes of having living offspring (someday), not to say the occasional midnight snack.

He takes her home one day, feeds on her - and it's delicious, given the hefty mood buff he gets from it - turning her in the process.

And ... promptly keels over dead of thirst.

What.

As it turns out, Joe was suffering from this bug that caused him to suffer massive, permanent mood decreases every time he got a mood buff. Which ... is ... mind-bogglingly frustrating, not to say stupid.Apparently this caused him to contract depression and suicide on a full stomach. I don't even know.So I started again, in the same neighborhood, with a differentJoe.

Joe Mk II had the good fortune of being given the Criminal career track, which is immensely more useful than Politics. He's got a vampiric lover (who, herself, is in love with an Elderly Sim named Edgardo, as well; I'm pretty much letting Edgardo kick the bucket from old age). His subterranean bunker is coming along nicely, and he's almost done with the Criminal career track. He's written three books now, all of them nonfictional accounts of his life and times.

In short, Joe Mk. II actually has a chance in hell of succeeding at this.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The parking lot was mostly empty, and I park a ways away from the entrance to the building. Every sense was straining for some kind of movement, some anomaly. I felt a little like I was being watched, but there was nothing there. No one.

Of course now I pay more attention than is really reasonable to the distant tree-line.

Fucking trees are everywhere.

When I got home, the whole neighborhood was empty. No cars parked in front of my neighbors' houses. Trees remain abundant, like tall people with black arms stretched up toward the sky. It's a midwestern suburb. Of course there are trees everywhere.

The neighbors probably just had somewhere else to be.

Which, you know, never happens really.

But whichever.

It was just so ... quiet. Eerie. So I fished around in my purse to find this thick chain necklace (think: necklace made of chain mail) I keep because hell, getting hit with it hurts, and it draws less attention than anything else I could have on me. I don't think 'jewelry' properly qualifies for weaponry, but hey, if I can make a potential intruder disagree, I've done a good job. No? Plus it looks pretty cool.

Nudged the door open with my foot, turned on the light - that humanish figure I was seeing is just Mom's mannequin. I knew that. Grab my sword. Poke around a bit, make sure there's nothing to find.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

So, in an attempt to be somewhat more cheerful than Friday's uh ... BLACK ABYSS of DESPAIR, I decided I'd elaborate on some of the topics mentioned there, especially the sensory thing, which you might have guessed by the title.

So, TL;DR: I seem to have reasonably acute senses when measured against other people. Kind of. The end.

For anecdotal proof, read on:

I took some psychology classes in college and high school as electives, because the subject interests me. I can't really recall if this happened in college or high school, but one of my psychology teachers set up sensory tests as part of the chapter on the senses. The one I remember vividly involved the sense of taste: the teacher presented four jugs of water and insisted only one of them had a minimal amount of sugar. This was untrue; all four jugs had a different amount of sugar in them. All four of the glasses of water I was presented with tasted different.

So yeah. That's nice.

The hearing ... hm. I've got a couple of stories on that. When I was very young, they put us through a few hearing tests, one of which was off in a kind of in a quiet room. Essentially, the idea was to raise your hand when you heard a beep, depending on which ear you heard it in. Well, I raised my hand when a phone three rooms away rang, despite the noise-canceling headphones I was wearing at the time. This sense hasn't really diminished much at all over time, probably because I don't really think "bleeding ears" is an acceptable decibel level for music to be played at. On a practical level, this is a huge advantage in my current - and previous - lines of work. At the haunted house, it allowed me to filter through the din of all the ambient noise and music to hear where a group of customers was, pretty much throughout the house. At a call center, it helps when a customer is softspoken and can't seem to figure out which part of the phone to speak into.

Sight is ... interesting. As I might have already mentioned, I've got significant visual disturbances that no eye doctor has been able to attribute to actual physical damage. It's probably some kind of disruption in the nervous system. Or alternatively, y'know, crazy person. I also wear corrective lenses as I am nearsighted. That said, up close especially, my eyesight is fairly acute. In addition, I have remarkable night vision, which is both a positive and a negative. On the positive side, we have all the normal benefits of good night vision, plus things like this post, which was written with the aid of a very dim, green, LED bulb placed across the room in otherwise complete darkness. With the aid of a glow stick, I was actually able to write at almost my normal font size, and read with no difficulty. On the negative side, we have a certain amount of photosensitivity: bright lights are uncomfortable, especially oncoming headlights on the road, for example, but also a bright, sunny day can, if I'm not prepared for it, lead to a bright, shiny headache.

Smell is one of the less useful senses for me, and I seem to be more easily overwhelmed by powerful odors than most people. However, since most of the people I know are smokers due to the whole "call center" thing, it's not really like I've got any kind of baseline to work against If possible, I completely avoid the perfume and detergent aisles of any store; they make me lightheaded and dizzy. Smell is also one of the easiest senses to ignore in day-to-day life, and one of the harder senses to measure against any other person's regardless.

Touch is ... well, pain is part of the sense of touch, right?

I can't say I feel much of anything acutely, other than pain. And cold. And pain as a result of intense cold. Painkillers don't really work effectively for anybody in my family, least of all me. I also tend to ignore my body unless it's actually in pain, and even then, if I distract my mind, I don't even often notice there's anything to feel until it's excruciating. I do know I have a completely numb patch on my right leg that sometimes hurts when touched. I suspect nerve damage from an early-life bee sting to be the culprit: I had a bad allergic reaction.

I like to run my hands along walls as I walk.It helps ground me in reality.

I don't think I'm really outside the parameters of normal human functioning, as far as sensory data goes. I just know that some things, like the gentle clicking whir and beeping of my computer's normal operation (distinct from the fan), is audible and comforting, while the high, shrill noise of a supposedly "off" TV sets my teeth on edge, and most people seem oblivious to these things.

So there. Probably the most boring thing I'll ever write.

Hooray.

You probably should've quit reading this at the TL;DR.

It rained today. We're under a flood watch. It was so cold the rain became a centimeter-thick sheet of ice on my car.It hurt so much to scrape it off with my bare hands.

You know you say that but you really do have good hearing. How else do you hear the noises in the walls when all else is quiet?

The sensory tests ... that call the quality agent couldn't even hear words in, raising your hand because you heard a phone ring in the next room over despite noise-cancelling headphones, your night vision is remarkable. Writing normally, by GLOWSTICK. All four glasses tasted different. Hearing the high whine of an "off" TV. Perceiving that there are worlds on worlds of color.

Oh god.

That drawing.

Any kind of free thought is unsettling. Like that simple pencil drawing on black paper. You got an honorable mention for an hour's work.

I hate everything.

I try not to think too much.

There is static in my EYES.

Usually I can at least outline the chaos

I bet you $20USD I can't read even half of this in the morning.

my head hurts

everything

hurts

Oh my god.

can we pretend (airplanes) = (shooting stars)?

Getting Paid

Raspberry Cheesecake Cookies BEAR!

Life is pretty good right now really, for me. HAT! COOKIES!

Think of

HAPPY

THOUGHTS

Is this what going mad feels like?

If life is so good why can't I just focus on

That?!

I should try to make friends in real life.

Beneath the pleasant happy surface you are FUCKING INSANE

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Everything hurts

nanananananananaBATMAN

I feel so alone especially when there are a I CAN SEE YOU

lot of people I can't talk to around. I CAN SEE YOU

OTHER PEOPLE CAN'T RELATE TO ME IRL. I CAN SEE YOU

Noises in the walls.

I'M NOT IDarkest just before DAWN

PARALYZED CAN'Toh my god I think

BUT I SEEM SEE I'm actually going

TO BE STRUCK ANYTHING insane

BY YOU So ALONEcan see you. "Going"?

So if it wears black clothing, dyes its hair black, is deathly pale, and cries a lot, is it a pathetic emo kid? I think it is. Stupid whiny bitch. 99% of everything is SHIT shutupshutupSo tense. Keep clenching my fist. And jaw. shutupshutupemphasize everythingHad a bit of a freak-out last night when I got home. Shaking and jittery."I'm having a panic attack!" Maybe it's the caffeine?Is there anybody out there 'coz it's gettin' harder and harder to BREATHE.Shaking cold trying to ... BUFFERING ... BOOM .youarenotprepared. Dare you to read this.ramming always works (with a bat) Assume it IS just Then assume an ARG even one "Masky"takes it as srs as you do. Never sleep again.If Mom died I'd fall apart. "Daddy" wonder what that's like.

DON'T The lol fNEED rap has plants oANY eaten my grow r Red RobesTHING Pandora c better g HANDS ARE SMALLOR PAN o to e NOT YOURSANY DOR l DEATH t MY OWNONE A d METAL the IDIOT EAT YOU world I hate youOF Insignificant what More out of space than empty spaceHIGHER Little Blue Planet am Set the world on firePURPOSE I?There is no one to answer. Have always felt like I'm being watchedI don't feel safe. PARANOIA IS BAD OKAY. I don't feel safe in my house right now. ShakingI can see the light flickering every so often. Cold Automatic writingI walked in tonight and I went straight for my sword. Shaking HANDS ARE SHAKING COLD Cold

Sleeping with the light on again.Blood red.I DON'T FEEL SAFE

MONSTER

INHUMAN

YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL

YOU LIKE TO PRETEND YOU'RE SOMETHING SPECIAL BUT YOU'RE NOTSELF-IMPORTANTYOU PEOPLE ARE ALL SO DAMN FUCKEVERYTHING Mom claims to have spoken to a psychic I never met who claimed that she was descended from some kind of red-robed ... folk. Powerful folk. But she's protected. BLOCKED. An angel guardian and an island of blissful ignorance. I am not protected. I don't think. I feel sometimes like there is something waiting beyond sight, waiting for me to drop my guard.COLDCOLDCOLDCOLDCOLDCOLDCOLDCOLD

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Can someone be said to be suffering from a crisis of (absence of) faith?

I think I have diagnosed a key problem with my psyche: I have significant difficulty with belief.

I have been raised as I think most Americans have, with an odd duality. At once we are told to believe only in the rational and quantifiable and logical, the hard data and concrete proofs in the world, yet then also we are told of Santa Claus, God, the Devil, tarot cards and Slender Men, and we are supposed to sort which of these are fiction from the facts.

I don't believe in God. Not really. I don't believe in God or Jesus, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, Slender Man or the Devil himself.

But I also cannot so blithely discount myths and legends, magical and unquantifiable lines of reasoning, just because I have not personally experienced anything that counts as hard, logical proof. There is an incredibly large chunk of my mind that simply wants to believe in something ... more. Something beyond the dull mundane world of phone calls and little handheld computer-phones and sleeping peacefully in my blissful island of ignorance. Some part of me wants to get the chance to talk to Cthulhu, no matter how much it would shatter my mind. I think there's a very real desire to be special or important, and I think most humans experience it, and I think that's part of why we devise our little religions with us as the center point.

This inability to decide leads to an ... unease, we will go with unease. There is a schism in my personality, a hard line between a very serious, stony side which believes only in that which I can see and feel and touch, research and prove, and a more ... childlike innocence, a willingness to believe and an enchantment with the fantastic.

I love the idea of magic.

I hate the idea of magic.

No, I really don't want you to try and convert me to your religion. What really makes you think it's all that much better and more true than any of the hundreds of other lines of illogical thought? What makes you think that believing in an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity (who actually still gives a damn about humanity, not to say a reality that, being omniscient, he/she/it knows inside and out, from start to finish) that rules over everything is any more reasonable than believing in an omniscient, omnipresent deity that gives out material wealth to small children over the course of a given holiday season (be it the Easter Bunny's chocolate Cadbury Eggs or Santa Claus's gaily wrapped presents)?

Yes, I really do want you to try and convert me to your religion. There's a certain ... comfort ... to belief. There's a joy in feeling as though you are a small part of something larger than yourself. The idea of being a large part of that selfsame entity is intoxicating, if foolish. There's a wonderful relief to the idea that a man with a gun might not completely and utterly end your consciousness just because your brain - and all of your chemical, emotional responses - have been shut down. I only ask for the one thing no religion seems able to provide: proof that cannot be explained by any other means. Proof that does not rely upon confirmation bias and self-delusion.

There's a reason I identify as Agnostic but actually don't try to think about it too hard.

My head hurts.

Now excuse me while I go sleep with the lights still burning because I can't disbelieve in the Slender Man just because He's probably fake.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Or: I am writing this on a Droid I bought with the money I didn't spend on Valentine's Day.

Swype is interesting in concept, but it doesn't always anticipate what I mean. Which is all right, I mean, getting a new phone is a process of adaptation, especially a new smartphone. Especially a new smartphone with no physical keyboard.

I guess this would be easier on the computer I'm sitting right in front of, but I'm doing this partly to acclimate myself to the layout.

So, no real theme to this anyway, just rambling a bit.

That said, this weekend I discovered something really fun to do, and I'm hoping people will catch me just a'doin' it, because I'm a narcissist who deeply enjoys attention: I learned that if there is one thing more fun than messing up and dying horribly in a video game, it's dying horribly in a video game while filming your failure.

Friday, February 11, 2011

So, fair warning, this post is depressing. Like, very. Like, I might as well slap "Trigger Warning" on the front if you're a particularly sensitive, easily-depressed person. Written Thursday, before the whole ... dog ... thing.

Purse-sized notebook is pretty cool

Writing smaller to fill full quantity of content.

Talking and thinking is becoming garbled.

Multiple Monsters, can't recommend.

Sleepy. So sleepy. Terribly sleepy.CAFFEINE IS GREAT.

I feel sometimes like this whole blog is one long ode to sanity slippage.Then again, aren't all blogs that even so much as mention the Slender Man a bit like that?Planning to buy Droid for self for Valentine's Day. No male/female/inanimate object to serenade, and getting paid.

Valentine's day: Because FUCK single people am I right?waitasecI'M
SINGLE

Thinking about selling off old computer since it's never used.Destroy she said THE END My love again WILL
Don't try again COME
to make amends QUICKLY
(A boat) YOU'LL JUST
(I'm on one) END UP Sinking
If you explode in aftermath
Don't think that you've
DESTROY been Dreaming
she said My love again
When it's not worth keeping

TVTROPES
WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE. Seems like a lot of people learn about Slendy via TVTropes. So is it TVTropes will END your life? Whoops.

tinyurl for tiny text. I don't ever use the full link, and since you're here, probably you knew that, huh? ( X )

Google has become a verb. It's like using a band-aid. Technically it's a bandage, but eh. Some wacky foreigners call it a "plaster," too. I think mostly Brit

GAH LIGHT VERY BRIGHTI mentioned that I'm a very boring person who mostly stays home right? Sunshine is shiny. It's dark in my house. Like a CAVE inside. I'm a very nocturnal person too, seriously. Before I started my job I was going to bed at 8 AM.

Otterbox cases are apparently BOMB-proof. Run it over, drop it in the toilet, hit it with a hammer, and the phone still works. I just wow.

Twitter being faster on my phone is kind of sad to me. The computer in my hand is nice. Want the Droid.

I kind of like this wonky line in the middle here.

Technical support with people who should never have a cell phone, much less a smartphone. FUN.

I suck at everything and I'm stupid and I should just die.

Phone trees are cyborgs. They're made partly of people, partly of machinery. PHONE TREES will kill the world.

Rolling words in my head. I don't think there's even a Bluff around here at all. This place is kind of flat. Maybe they're referring to bluff as in the horrible lies sense. With a high enough bluff check you can pretty much rewrite reality. LOLOL.

Everyone makes stupid mistakes. IF I'm so smart then I Shouldn't. EVER.
My god you're such a whiny fucking BITCH Should just DIE. Fuckfuckfuck. Suck at everything.

Probably shouldn't post this.

DUMB BITCH. =(

Unlikable loser. Only thing worse than a know-it-all is a stupid know-it-all who's a fucking idiot.

Hahahahaha. "Nightly ritual of bitching about how everybody but me and my healer are incompetent." That assumes I'M not incompetent.I suck just as much if not more.

I'm my own worst enemy DON'T LET ME GET MEIt's bad when you annoy yourselfSo irritating
DON'T WANNA BE MY FRIEND NO MORE
I wanna be somebody else.

ALL
I do is bitch and whine, bitch and whine. How can anybody stand me?
Shut up.

My brain is so empty the thoughts are falling out. I think I hate myself. I really do.

Feeling queasy. Didn't sleep enough. FUCKINGDepressed and STUPID I'm such a IDIOT ANY
Like a black cloud in my head that I can't begin to penetrate. Like I'm good for THING.

Had a weird-ass dream this morning. Two actually. First one I thought I was waking up and then my door opened. A grayscale clown tried to shove his way into my room, and he succeeded, but I smashed the door on him a few times, then hit him a lot with my sword (it has a wooden sheath so I just use it like a club). And he kept laughing. I got the impression I managed to shut out something worse though.

The other dream was just as weird. I was laying on the ground in the underbrush of a forest. I saw two pictures in front of me, only they weren't photos, they were like five-second videos on some kind of clear plastic substance. The pictures - was it two or three? - were of little boys I'd never seen before. When I reached out to look at them (there wasn't any clothing, but it was a bust shot every time) a shadow fell over me and I just knew it was the Slender Man. Worse: NO AUDIO.

Felt like I lurched sideways out of my body just now. Feeling dizzy and disoriented, eyes are watering, what the hell.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

So, Firday I purchased a new game to try to take my mind off of being so depressed/paranoid/sobbing ball of angst. That game was Civilization IV.

I think I've actually found something to do between digsites. Wow.

So the first thing you need to know about Civ that I didn't fully comprehend at first is that it's very, very long. Like, very. Like, by the time the day was out, I wasn't quite done with the game I'd started that morning.

This isn't the first or only game of its kind that I've played. I mean, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is one of the bigger reasons I plan to keep a computer with XP around for a while.

But yes. Civ. Long. There are no zerg.

That said, I had a bit of fun playing around with it.

At first.

Once I got over how long it took to even get my first other unit, I ran up against the fact that I pretty much had to shoot for the score victory, because the few cultures (read all) that had survived to the modern era didn't really like me well enough to vote for me (because they didn't like each other to tolerate me associating with all of them). Next time I play peacefully I'm tempted to see if I can strong-arm my opponents into starting up long, bloody wars to ostracize and murder the competition for me.

You know. Peacefully.

Alternatively, nukes.

The Space Race is another win condition I might be able to do peacefully, except for how long it takes to get there, which I am slowly shortening down to the lowest possible number.

I discovered something in pursuing the Space Race, too.

The AI? (On Chieftan difficulty?) Not really designed to operate in a void. I started up a new playthrough after my first attempt crashed to the desktop (damn you, Windows), remaining peaceful - and isolated, thanks to living on a tiny island. By the time the other cultures' feeble wooden ships skimmed near my shores, I was exploring nuclear technology - and defending myself against the possibility that, I dunno, maybe one of my own engineers would go nuts and bomb my own cities, maybe? None of the other cultures were even in a position to try to comprehend the technologies I was developing. I was in a position to dominate the world, and I was seriously contemplating crushing my opposition under the sheer force of my nuclear might because I could do so unopposed.

And I think I'm going to do that on my next playthrough.

Which brings me to something else that amuses me greatly: Mom brought up that throughout her listening to my discovery of new technologies, there was never the mention of any kind of witch burnings, nor even the Crusades or any kind of religious warfare. Despite the fact that my technology rapidly approached the 'indistinguishable from magic' point compared to my contemporaries, and I founded four separate religions on my tiny island.

Burn the witch! Before she BURNS YOU IN THE RIGHTEOUS NUCLEAR FIRE OF GOD!

Monday, February 7, 2011

So, anybody who can scroll down the page and see my twitter feed will probably already know this. Kind of. So here's the somewhat less abridged version.

Sam was never really my dog, you know? He's a little toy poodle, purebred, not like it matters since the first thing Grandma did when she got him was cut off the breeding bits (with a vet's assistance but still). He had a bunch of genetic problems - his teeth were messed up, his knees were messed up, his heart was failing him for the last five years of his life. Which, see, is why inbreeding is a bad thing, purity or not.

But yeah. So, initially, he belonged to Grandma, and she took care of him, I guess, at least until she passed away from liver cancer. I miss Grandma sometimes, but it's finally distant enough it doesn't hurt so badly anymore.

Then, my Great-Grand-Uncle (I think?) Tom inherited him. We always called the old man Uncle Tom, which come to think of it is part of the name of a book, right? They were basically inseparable, right up until he, too, died - from pneumonia and old age. There's a little bit of a pattern here.

Grandpa took care of him from then on. There's this old recliner in our house, and I've got all kinds of memories of Grandpa sitting in it, learning computers and watching television, whatever. He retired, and less than a year after that, we found out he had lung cancer. A couple of years after that, and he's just gone.

Two days before Sam died, I saw him just -staring- at that recliner, the one that sits empty most of the time anymore. Sam used to sit in it with him, you see.

And now Sam's gone, too.

We couldn't even bury him properly, because of all the snow. We'll do it, yeah, after the ground thaws out, but still.

I was never really all that close to him.

The house seems so much more empty now that the last of the pets have gone.

Friday, February 4, 2011

I need more sleep than I'm getting
I am having so many problems focusing I need to make the computer read it to me while I read it with my eyes. LOLOLOLOLOL

Slendy ruins techno and makes the TV antenna's loss of signal more worrisome than it should ever be.

He hit me with his ||||||||.
That's cool ._.

There is a numb spot on my leg. It itches.

I am running out of paper

An if ye harm none
ABOVE ALL ELSE HARM NONE

Tappa tappa tappa 40k songs guy has music in his mind and it is hard to ignore when it escapes

ONE BY ONE HIS SPOTS FELL OFF
( X )
Splendorman -> Slenderman

I wonder if you can see the Slender Man in any other way than film if you are not his intended victim.

If the Slender Man was real and he abducts children and he always appears on film why is He not in more proud parents' home videos?

IT'S SPLENDOR MAN!!! :D

I can hear the music someone else is listening to at the other end of the table and only just cannot make out the words; it is very LOUD.

Wanna sleep. By the time this is read I will have moved to an easier work schedule and my brain will be less mushy. I am so tired and it is hard to keep my eyes open.

I can see the reflection of the overhead lights and my hair in my glasses which is cool. I watch shadows and reflections as much as the real world.

Burning eyes are burning. TIRED AND COLD my eyes burn

Mtn. Dew: Because we as a society have become too lazy to spell out "Mountain." WTF.

"I before E except after C."
"Well, what about 'leisure' and 'seizure'?"
"Ah, |||| it."
English is the language that beats up other languages and takes their loose grammar.

Germ-X smells like dying germs.

THIS IS DRY READING.

So very bored in the brain I am so tired.

|||| you SLabs. Only one Labyrinth, but everybody calls it SLabs. Why is that? Because SLabs is a subsection of HELL where bad tanks go to DIE. |||| you SLabs.

"Where were you when the world stopped turnin'
on that September day?"
America is self-important.

I can smell food because someone has food and I am hungry ANGRY SIMLISH AND ARM WAVING MY MOODS ARE RED-LINING I HATE YOU SELF.

Mood swings, of a sort.

I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I want a nap.
I am not allowed to sleep.

My hand has fallen asleep and when I twitch my fingers I can feel fizzy blood tingling in my wrist and palm and fingertips all the way up to my elbow. I punched my wall on accident and my finger started bleeding it still hurts I think I have a minor infection.

TRUE ART IS ANGSTY. ICAN'T SLEEPJUST WANT A NAP TO SLEEP IS THAT SO BAD?

Isn't it nice to have a computer that will talk to you?

TRUE ART IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE AS IS THIS READING MY EYES HAVE GLAZED OVER IT ISN'T VERY HARD I JUST CAN'T FOCUS RIGHT NOW AT ALL.
There are still things to do
And it is important that I do them
The channel keeps changing in my head and I have no control over the remote I can't focus I can't focus I can't think I'm so tired I don't know anything why am I so tired?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Like a vampire, specifically. Agh. I have problems falling asleep at night, and waking up before noon is a special kind of hell for me. As such, I have, off and on, been testing energy drinks' effectiveness on me, since most kinds of jobs tend to be scheduled for the daytime hours. The most amusing one I've tried came in a pseudo-blood pack, actually. Colored red, it tasted a bit like Flintstones vitamins: fruit punch with a vaguely chalky aftertaste.

The ex warned me off of 5 Hour Energy since they apparently taste bad, and he's got the taste buds of a smoker. Also apparently it's going to kill him someday. Given how little he sleeps, I tend to agree.

I tried a Monster last night, by which I mean early afternoon, by which I mean I stopped drinking it, at the latest, by 4 or 5 PM.

I then became annoyingly bubbly for the next six or seven hours and abandoned my ability to think in a straight line. Around 11:30 I laid down because I knew I had work this morning, and around 1 AM I finally stopped being wide awake. I think I finally fell unconscious around 1:30 AM.

All I can say is, I can't wait for next Monday. Seven AM is slowly, but surely, killing me.

Oh: the Monster tasted suspiciously close to the "bloody" energy shot, this post was written sometime last week, and I decided to get another Monster around noon of that day. No serious negative side effects, anyway, that I could see.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

3:27 PM 1/29/11
The sun is so bright it hurts my eyes. I feel like I've made some kind of momentous, world-shaking decision just now ... if only I could remember what it was. Ah, well.3:35 - I'm awful tired - since the closest civilization is the Imperial City, I guess I have to hope the guards won't recognize me. What did I even do to get arrested?

3:50 - Eugh, it's raining.

4:18 - Joking around with the guards is probably a good way to get locked up again, but it really seems like nobody else knows who I am, either.

4:23 - I meant to take a nap, but apparently instead I fell into a coma that lasted until morning. Ah, well.

4:32 - It's like I didn't even exist before I woke up in that cell. By Azura ... am I even real? "Perhaps the Gods have placed you here so that we may meet." Chilling, old man.

4:42 - I have memories of being a spellcaster - I remember how to use several spells, and I know what many more of them do. Maybe someone at the Arcane University will remember me? It's all I have to go on.

5:13 - Spoke to a woman named Bothiel. Have problems telling Bosmer from Altmer half the time. Bah. She handed me a list and said it was most urgent that the items on it be collected. Apparently some kind of bandits attacked the Orrery. Maybe I'll help out. I'm pretty sure Bothiel doesn't like me. Well, I don't like her either.

5:23 - Have decided to look up my own status in the Mage's Guild. I have to have learned it all somewhere, right? Starting with Bruma. Somebody has to know who I am.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

So, let's play some Elder Scrolls. I haven't done that in a while, and TES5 has been announced. Glee and joy, Skyrim!

I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's kind of my favorite, partially since I got introduced to Morrowind after Oblivion's release and the graphics did not age well. My $15/month goes to playing WoW as a glorified chat room, while in the foreground the character creation screen boots up. Ah, Oblivion, how I've missed you.

12:03 PM 1/29/11Behold: in darkness, a doom sweeps the land ...

12:04 - You know, this game's facial graphics haven't really aged well, but the rest of it is still beautiful.

12:05 - Dunmer for min-maxing, or Bosmer for looks. HM.

12:09 - This persistent "staring at the sky" thing is seriously starting to bug me. Given my plans for a Dunmer to be the new Madgod, sure. She can be a space cadet.

12:24 - I wake up in a corner of a cold, dark, cell. My head hurts like it's been kicked in by an entire herd of horses. I don't even remember who I am. Where am I? Why am I here? By Azura ... everything hurts. I can hear something in the distance ...?

12:34 - 'scuse me, playing with the skin color now. I made a goth! And she has a name. Amelie.

12:42 - Now what? There's a Dunmer in the other cell ... gah, I'm so confused. All this talk of destiny ... can that man have really been the Emperor? They left the secret passage open behind them. Since my options are "follow" and "Rot down here forever," I guess I'll choose "follow."

12:47 - There's no way this can end badly.

12:53 - I must have been some kind of badass before getting locked down here. I've got skills I'm pretty sure a simple commoner shouldn't. Lockpicking, swordplay, spellcasting ... I found some heavy iron armor, and it just felt right to put it on.

1:14 - Why would the goblins be standing at the bottom of a log trap? They're all greenish ... and crushed. Wonder if any of the loot is usable. (Answer: No.)

1:23 - I feel like an invisible hand is guiding me sometimes, sure. But the Nine Divines? I don't know if I believe in your human religion, buddy. Meh. Trying to remember if my birthsign was Thief or Warrior. I'm not feeling especially lucky, but maybe we'll turn that around, yeah?

1:40 - I've got a real torch now. Hooray.

1:41 - IT'S A TRAP.

1:45 - But I liked Captain Renault's sword. I guess I get to run an errand for the Empire. I do feel a bit guilty, letting the Emperor die, if I'm such a badass.1:58 - Trying to improve graphics. Oblivion has stopped working. Dammit. Fucking crashes.

2:29 - Research online suggests SaveINI from the console. Hooray! Of course, there's no way to open the console with Vista or later as your OS ... Spell of Open The Damn Console, 'kgo.